I love a good surprise of a film.  When we got this one in the mail we, quite frankly, were a little worried.  A killer with Alzheimer’s?  This can’t be good.  Why did I even put it in the queue?  Besides, we’d been on a Mad Men Season Three spree (one more DVD to go!) and weren’t terribly keen on breaking up the flow, but, reluctant as we were, we did, and boy were we ever glad.  This is a fantastic film.

The story follows two men on very different sides of the law.  One, a cop who cannot let go of a particular case involving a young girl, and the other, a professional hit man.  Each man is damaged and worn in his own way.  Vincke (the police officer) is obsessed by work and a great loss, and Ledda by the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s and a past he thought he left behind.  The two men’s lives intersect when they both find themselves working on the same case.  Vincke wants to bring the criminals to justice, while Ledda prefers them dead.

It is a race to the finish, as Ledda, with a clear lead over the police, leaves them clues and calls them out on their slowness.  It is an expertly written and well acted story.  Full of moral ambiguity, surprises, twists, and odd bits of humor, this film was a worthy pause in the Mad Men frenzy.